#also the ann selzer poll results

[lies]

The thematic overlap between what’s happening on Tuesday and what happened last night makes me hopeful.

ain't no need to help me, 'cause baby i deliver

CHAPPELL ROAN The Giver | Saturday Night Live

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

Donald Trump demanded on Sunday that pollster Ann Selzer be investigated for releasing a preelection poll of Iowa that showed him losing to Vice President Kamala Harris.  “A totally Fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time. She knew exactly what she was doing,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Thank you to the GREAT PEOPLE OF IOWA for giving me such a record breaking vote, despite possible ELECTION FRAUD by Ann Selzer and the now discredited ‘newspaper’ for which she works. An investigation is fully called for!” Trump attacked Selzer after the longtime pollster announced that she is retiring from conducting election polling. 

“Over a year ago I advised the [Des Moines] Register I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired with the latest election poll as I transition to other ventures and opportunities,” she wrote in a column in the newspaper, whose polling she conducted for decades. “Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course. It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite. I am proud of the work I’ve done for the Register, for the Detroit Free Press, for the Indianapolis Star, for Bloomberg News and for other public and private organizations interested in elections. They were great clients and were happy with my work.”

Seltzer’s final Iowa poll was way off the mark. It showed Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points, but Trump went on to win the state by 13 points. However, releasing a poll that turned out to be incorrect is not illegal. And subjecting pollsters to ridiculous investigations if their polls were incorrect would have a chilling effect on the industry because pollsters wouldn’t want to risk their financial security or freedom and would either not release their surveys or shut down altogether.

On Oct. 31, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS News, falsely alleging that the “60 Minutes” interview the network aired with Harris was doctored and amounted to a “deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news."

[...] MSNBC is preemptively kissing Trump’s ring ahead of his inauguration in January. The co-hosts of the network’s “Morning Joe” program, who have been loudly critical of Trump since he incited an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, went to Mar-a-Lago to clear the air with Trump before he takes office. "Joe and I realize it's time to do something different," Mika Brzezinski said on air Monday morning. "And that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him." What “Morning Joe” just did is a perfect example of Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder describes in his book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” as “obeying in advance.” “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given,” Snyder wrote in his book. “In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Unhinged demagogue Donald Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday demanding that retiring pollster Ann Selzer be investigated for releasing a poll that had Kamala Harris up 3 in Iowa right before the election.

Selzer announced her retirement from the Des Moines Register, which was in the works for a year.

[marta-bee]

Let's try this again.

Late last night, I heard the disturbing news that Trump would be suing Ann Selzer. The only news coverage was from Fox, and I actually heard of it from the family text thread (my parents used to work for a Ganett-owned local paper, the same parent company involved in the law suit, so yes, this one is hitting the grapevine hard in Marta-land). I fired off a quick Tumblr post right away, then deleted it after deciding such weighty things needed calmer heads, or at least daylight, to do them justice.

I've slept and the sun's up. I'm still pissed off, and not unreasonably.

On the plus side, the rest of the US news has gotten their own accounts up. NBC has a good run-down of the facts here. But briefly:

Donald Trump is suing Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register and the newspaper's parent company, Gannett, accusing them of consumer fraud, according to a copy of the filing reviewed by NBC News. The suit, filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa, says it seeks “accountability for brazen election interference” over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris up 3 percentage points in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by double digits, a difference that his lawyers argue in the suit constitutes “election-interfering fiction.” The president-elect is making the claim under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising.

Trump recently won another lawsuit against ABC. Their TV host George Stephanopoulos had repeatedly said Trump had been found liable for rape. In reality he was found guilty of sexual assault, which is legally distinct from rape but (they argued, & I agree) covered by how most people actually understand that term. They caved, by which I mean they agreed to pay $16mil to Trump before the lawsuit was settled by the court. So, you know, not a great few days for the Fourth Estate.

The difference is with ABC, Trump took issue with the analysis, and technically I suppose he had a point, though I still think ABC should have fought it and probably should have won. With Ann Selzer, their poll was so far from the actual results, he's accusing her and her paper of election interference. You know, with absolutely no evidence we've seen of bad intention or that they did anything questionable to get those poll results. The court filings describe it as a "leaked and manipulated" poll," which isn't true as far as I'm aware, and "the Harris poll," which comes closer to defamation of character (Selzer's) than anything she did.

Polls don't claim to predict the future; they're a snapshot in time, and have all sorts of biases and limitations pollsters try to account for with statistics and margins of error, with varying success. I'd be interested in knowing why this one got it so wrong, but I don't think there's something nefarious at work, aside from the lawsuit which is bonkers-pants and absolutely disgusting. Because what Trump's really saying is just having facts he disagrees with - he's talking about the poll results, which are facts, not whatever conclusions or predictions Selzer or others drew from them - and as the wise man said, "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." You'd think in this economy we'd stick to that for efficiency's sake if nothing else. :-(

I know I've been talking a lot about politics around here. Believe me, I wish I had the headspace to enjoy normal things, and I've also been actively trying to carve out space for that kind of stuff. I understand if you're sick of hearing about this kind of thing, truly. That said, if anything still matters (and it really should!), this feels like it should be it.

(PS-@jazzthecat00 also pointed to this HuffPo article from before the lawsuit was filed, which does a good analysis of the issues involved. They also said (I'm paraphrasing) that Trump seems really emboldened since the election, and I couldn't agree more. Sorry I deleted your comment when I scrapped the earlier post!)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

More accurate ....

* * * *

TRUMP OPENS FIRE ON THE MEDIA

TCinLA

Dec 17, 2024

The point is not necessarily winning. The point is fear. Now that Disney has surrendered and paid their initiation fee, Trump is ready to commit more extortion, er, I mean start more lawsuits.

In his rambling fact-challenged press conference yesterday, Trump targeted Bob Woodward, CBS, and the Pulitzer Board for awarding its 2018 Prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of Trump’s campaign, the Steele Dossier, and the Mueller investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election. Trump also described recent visits from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and other tech barons. “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everyone wants to be my friend.”

On Monday night, less than 48 hours after securing a $15 million settlement from ABC News, Trump filed a lawsuit in Iowa District Court accusing venerated pollster Ann Selzer and her polling company - and well as The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett - of “brazen election interference” and “consumer fraud” over her November 2 poll showing Kamala Harris winning by 3 points in Iowa.

Whether Seltzer’s polling error constitutes an “election-interfering fiction,” as the suit alleges, is now the question before a Polk County court. Iowa lacks an anti-SLAPP law, a protection that gives judges the ability to swiftly toss out frivolous attacks on free speech. Trump’s newest legal adventure leans on an extremely aggressive reading of Iowa’s consumer fraud law intended to prevent businesses from making misrepresentations to deceive purchasers.

Selzer’s spent three decades in the polling business and boasts an A+ rating from Nate Silver, Her sterling reputation was the main reason why many in Washington and the media took her startling Iowa result at least somewhat seriously. Even among veteran political operators who wrote off the Harris +3 number as an outlier, the prospect that pollsters might be significantly undercounting Democratic votes fomented a temporary media narrative that Kamala’s campaign had crucial momentum heading into the final days of the race.

Two weeks after the election, Selzer announced she would be retiring from the polling business to explore “other ventures and opportunities,”a decision she said she made last year. “Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course,” she wrote in a guest essay for The Des Moines Register. “It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite.”

Trump was still fuming over the last-minute narrative shift that the poll generated. He now appears eager to run up the score.

Ahead of filing the lawsuit Monday evening, Trump previewed his plans in an afternoon press conference. “We have to straighten out our press,” he said. “Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

Besides the ABC News suit, Trump is suing CBS News for $10 billion for the way it edited Bill Whitaker’s 60 Minutes interview with Harris - claiming the edited broadcast amounted to “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference.” He is now pursuing a case against the Pulitzer Prize board for awards to journalists from The New York Times and Washington Post who investigated his ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Never before has a candidate sued a pollster for setting off a negative news cycle. Typically, if a pollster is wrong, their reputation suffers, but they are rarely blamed for damaging a campaign.

The Des Moines Register said they stand by their reporting and believe a lawsuit would be “without merit.” It will be interesting to see what Gannet does here - they are a major company in the news business without other corporate interests.

As with Trump’s other lawsuits against media organizations, the objective isn’t to win but to intimidate.

Litigation is expensive for all parties, especially in high-profile cases such as those involving a former and future president, even if the suit is ultimately found to be frivolous. There is also the burden of the discovery process, which is always invasive and frequently ugly. Already, nervousness is spreading, with media companies preparing for litigation targeting journalists, including charges like defamation or even violations of the Espionage Act. Axios recently told its staff to expect an increased number of lawsuits from the Trump administration.

The fact that Trump has filed litigation against Selzer, and 60 Minutes could undercut his argument he’s too busy as president-elect to shoulder the burdens of civil litigation.

The two dominant theories about ABC’s surrender are that either Trump has unearthed potentially damaging information or correspondence at ABC News that Disney doesn’t want revealed, or that this is CEO Bob Iger’s gesture to Trump to avoid his vengeance and the lightning-rod spectacle of a public trial against a sitting president. Iger, since he returned to Disney, has been willing to placate the right to keep the company out of its crosshairs He knows he can’t give $1 million to Trump’s inauguration without causing an internal firestorm, and he hasn’t made his own tail-between-legs pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago. But he knows this settlement is a way to buy some insurance for the next four years. The question is how much goodwill it actually buys. If Trump sees an opportunity to benefit from attacking Disney, he’ll do it, regardless of Disney’s surrender.

Michelle Goldberg wrote of these events, Collectively, all these elite decisions to bow to Trump make it feel like the air is going out of the old liberal order. In its place will be something more ruthless and Nietzschean.”

Anne Applebaum, an expert on descents into authoritarianism, said, “Many people assumed in the past that the news media in the United States was too big, too diverse, and too complex to be intimidated.”

So much for that cornerstone of democracy.

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” - Edmund Burke

“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - Winston Churchill

[TCinLA]

[cherryblossomshadow]

North Carolina—and Iowa?

by Mary L. Trump

Excerpts:

On Saturday night, Ann Selzer, a pollster with a stellar reputation who specializes in the state [of Iowa], released a poll that has Kamala Harris up by 3 points.

Here is the history of Selzer’s polls since 2012. The actual election results are in parentheses:

2022 Senate: R+12 (R+12)

2020 President: R+7 (R+8)

2020 Senate: R+4 (R+7)

2018 Governor: D+2 (R+3)

2016 President: R+7 (R+9)

2014 Senate: R+7 (R+8)

2012 President: D+5 (D+6)

The result shocked the political world. It also reminded us that the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision continues to have serious electoral consequences for the party that is determined to turn women into second-class citizens.

Iowa has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. Beyond that, the state has been losing OB-GYNs since before Roe v Wade was overturned. And, in the wake of the decision, it’s been losing medical providers of all specialties.

.

In response to Selzer’s poll, Nate Silver, another pollster, that it was “incredibly gutsy to release this poll.”

Cohn recently admitted that “it is much safer, whether in terms of literal self-interest or purely psychologically, to find a close race than to gamble on a clear Harris victory.”

“When their results come in very blue, they don’t believe it,” Cohn wrote. “And frankly, I share that feeling: If our final Pennsylvania poll comes in at Harris +7, why would I believe it? As a result, pollsters are more willing to take steps to produce more Republican-leaning results.”

These comments are staggering:

Cohn and Silver see a close race because they want to see a close race.

This morning, The New York Times ceded the most valuable real estate on its front page to Nate Cohn, and ran his piece with this headline:

“Some Surprises in Last Battleground Polls, but Still a Deadlock”

And so it goes.

[bllsbailey]

J. Ann Selzer, Pollster Who Predicted Harris Would Win Iowa, Retires Following Huge Miss

Voters cast their ballots November 2, 2004 at the Dubuque County Fair Grounds in Dubuque County, Iowa. Iowa is a swing state both presidential candidates are hoping to win.

J. Ann Selzer, pollster who predicted Kamala Harris would win Iowa, has retired following a huge miss. 

On Sunday, Selzer announced her departure in a guest op-ed for The Des Moines Register and stated that she is planning to transition “to other ventures and opportunities.” 

“Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course. It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite,” Selzer wrote.

The Saturday before Election Day, Selzer had released a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll in which she had projected Vice President Kamala Harris 3 points ahead of President-elect Donald Trump in the race for the state’s six electoral votes. 

The prediction was a 7-point shift toward Harris from the same survey a month prior, and 16 points off the real election result. 

The poll then began to spark hope among Democrats that Harris had a chance to win Iowa even though Trump had won it in 2016 and 2020. 

Although Iowa was once considered a swing state, the state is now red and hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since re-electing Barack Obama in 2012. 

Seltzer posted on X doubling down that her departure wasn’t due to her poll miss.

“Oh, and mentions of ‘retirement’ are inaccurate. It’s been a long-time plan that this election would be my last work of this sort. Other work continues,” she said.

— J. Ann Selzer (@jaselzer) November 17, 2024

She also released a statement where she disclosed her post-mortem evaluation of the erroneous poll. 

“Since election night, I’ve worked my way through possible explanations for the dramatic difference between the final Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll that my company conducted,” Selzer wrote in her report. “To cut to the chase, I found nothing to illuminate the miss.”

She concluded by stating that her poll just failed to pick up the shift among men of color towards the president-elect since 84% of the poll’s respondents were white.

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Somebody’s going to be wrong in Alabama.

We’ve already urged caution when interpreting polls of Alabama’s special election to the U.S. Senate, which will be held on Tuesday. Some of that is because of the media’s usual tendency to demand certainty from the polls when the polls can’t provide it. And some of it is because of the circumstances of this particular race: a special election in mid-December in a state where Republicans almost never lose but where the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, has been accused of sexual misconduct toward multiple underaged women.

What we’re seeing in Alabama goes beyond the usual warnings about minding the margin of error, however. There’s a massive spread in results from poll to poll — with surveys on Monday morning showing everything from a 9-point lead for Moore to a 10-point advantage for Democrat Doug Jones — and they reflect two highly different approaches to polling.

Most polls of the state have been made using automated scripts (these are sometimes also called IVR or “robopolls”). These polls have generally shown Moore ahead and closing strongly toward the end of the campaign, such as the Emerson College poll on Monday that showed Moore leading by 9 points. Recent automated polls from Trafalgar Group, JMC Analytics and Polling, Gravis Marketing and Strategy Research have also shown Moore with the lead.

But when traditional, live-caller polls have weighed in — although these polls have been few and far between — they’ve shown a much different result. A Monmouth University survey released on Monday showed a tied race. Fox News’s final poll of the race, also released on Monday, showed Jones ahead by 10 percentage points. An earlier Fox News survey also had Jones comfortably ahead, while a Washington Post poll from late November had Jones up 3 points at a time when most other polls showed the race swinging back to Moore. And a poll conducted for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in mid-November — possibly released to the public in an effort to get Moore to withdraw from the race — also showed Jones well ahead.1

What accounts for the differences between live-caller and automated polls? There are several factors, all of which are potentially relevant to the race in Alabama:

Automated polls are prohibited by law from calling voters on cellphones.

Automated polls get lower response rates and therefore may have less representative samples.

Automated polls may have fewer problems with “shy” voters who are reluctant to disclose their true voting intentions.

Automated pollsters (in part to compensate for issues No. 1 and 2 above) generally make more assumptions when modeling turnout, whereas traditional pollsters prefer to let the voters “speak for themselves” and take the results they obtain more at face value.

Issue No. 1, not calling cellphones, is potentially a major problem: The Fox News poll found Jones leading by 30 points among people who were interviewed by cellphone. Slightly more than half of American adults don’t have access to a landline, according to recent estimates by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also found a higher share of mobile-only households in the South than in other parts of the country. Moreover, voters with landline service are older than the voting population as a whole and are more likely to be white — characteristics that correlate strongly with voting Republican, especially in states such as Alabama. Pollsters are aware of these problems, so they use demographic weighting to try to compensate. Even if you can’t get enough black voters on a (landline) phone, for instance, you may have some reasonable way to estimate how many black voters there “should” be in the electorate, based on Census Bureau data or turnout in previous elections — so you can weight the black voters you do get on the phone more heavily until you get the “right” demographic mix.

This sounds dubious — and there are better and worse ways to conduct demographic weighting — but it’s a well-accepted practice. (Almost all pollsters use demographic weighting in some form.) And sometimes everything turns out just fine — automated polls don’t have a great track record, but firms such as Trafalgar Group that do automated polling generally performed pretty well in 2016, for example. Some automated firms have also begun to supplement their landline samples with online panels in an effort to get a more representative sample. Still, cell-only and landline voters may be differentiated from one another in ways that are relevant for voting behavior but which don’t fall into traditional demographic categories — cell-only voters may have different media consumption habits, for instance. If nothing else, failing to call cellphones adds an additional layer of unpredictability to the results.

Apart from their failure to call mobile phones, automated polls have lower response rates (issue No. 2) — often in the low single digits. This is because voters are more likely to hang up when there isn’t a human on the other end of the line nudging them to complete a survey. Also, many automated polls call each household only once, whereas pollsters conducting traditional surveys often make several attempts to reach the same household. Calling a household only once could bias the sample in various ways — for instance, toward whichever party’s voters are more enthusiastic (probably Democrats in the Alabama race) or toward whoever tends to pick up the phone in a particular household (often older voters, rather than younger ones).

As for issue No. 3, proponents of automated polls — and online polls — sometimes claim that they yield more honest responses from voters than traditional polls do. Respondents may be less concerned about social desirability bias when pushing numbers on their phone or clicking on an online menu as opposed to talking to another human being. That could be particularly relevant in the case of Alabama if some voters are ashamed to admit that they plan to vote for Moore, a man accused of molesting teenagers.

With that said, while there’s a rich theoretical literature on social desirability bias, the empirical evidence for it affecting election polls is somewhat flimsy. The Bradley Effect (the supposed tendency for polls to overestimate support for minority candidates) has pretty much gone away, for instance. There’s been no tendency for nationalist parties to outperform their polls in Europe. And so-called “shy Trump” voters do not appear to have been the reason that Trump outperformed his polls last year.2

Finally (No. 4), automated and traditional pollsters often take different philosophies toward working with their data. Although they probably wouldn’t put it this way themselves, automated pollsters know that their raw data is somewhat crappy — so they rely more heavily on complicated types of turnout and demographic weighting to make up for it. Automated pollsters are more likely to weight their results by party identification, for instance — by how many Republicans, Democrats and independents are in their sample — whereas traditional pollsters usually don’t do this because partisan identification is a fluid, rather than a fixed, characteristic.

Although I don’t conduct polls myself, I generally side with the traditional pollsters on this philosophical question. I don’t like polls that impose too many assumptions on their data; instead, I prefer an Ann Selzer-ish approach of trusting one’s data, even when it shows an “unusual” turnout pattern or produces a result that initially appears to be an outlier. Sometimes what initially appears to be an outlier turns out to have been right all along.

With that said, automated pollsters can make a few good counterarguments. Traditional polls also have fairly low response rates — generally around 10 percent — and potentially introduce their own demographic biases, such as winding up with electorates that are more educated than the actual electorate. Partisan non-response bias may also be a problem — if the supporters of one candidate see him or her get a string of bad news (such as Moore in the Alabama race), they may be less likely to respond to surveys … but they may still turn up to vote.

Essentially, the automated pollsters would argue that nobody’s raw data approximates a truly random sample anymore — and that even though it can be dangerous to impose too many assumptions on one’s data, the classical assumptions made by traditional pollsters aren’t working very well, either. (Traditional pollsters have had a better track record over the long run, but they also overestimated Democrats’ performance in 2014 and 2016.)

So, who’s right? There’s a potential tiebreaker of sorts, which is online polls. Online polls potentially have better raw data than automated polls — they get higher response rates, and there are more households without landline access than without internet access. However, because there’s no way to randomly “ping” people online in the same way that you’d randomly call their phone, online surveys have no way to ensure a truly random probability sample.

To generalize a bit, online polls therefore tend to do a lot of turnout weighting and modeling instead of letting their data stand “as is.” But their raw data is usually more comprehensive and representative than automated polls, so they have better material to work with.

The online polls also come out somewhat in Moore’s favor. Recent polls from YouGov and Change Research show him ahead by 6 points and 7 points, respectively; in the case of the Change Research poll, this reflects a reversal from a mid-November poll that had Jones ahead.

But perhaps the most interesting poll of all is from the online firm SurveyMonkey. It released 10 different versions (!) of its recent survey, showing everything from a 9-point Jones lead to a 10-point Moore lead, depending on various assumptions — all with the same underlying data.

Although releasing 10 different versions of the same poll may be overkill, it illustrates the extent to which polling can be an assumption-driven exercise, especially in an unusual race such as Alabama’s Senate contest. Perhaps the most interesting thing SurveyMonkey found is that there may be substantial partisan non-response bias in the polling — that Democrats were more likely to take the survey than Republicans. “The Alabama registered voters who reported voting in 2016 favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 50 to 39 percentage point margin,” SurveyMonkey’s Mark Blumenthal wrote. “Trump’s actual margin was significantly larger (62 to 34 percent).”

In other words, SurveyMonkey’s raw data was showing a much more purple electorate than the solid-red one that you usually get in Alabama. If that manifests in actual turnout patterns — if Democrats are more likely to respond to surveys and are more likely to vote because of their greater enthusiasm — Jones will probably win. If there are some “shy Moore” voters, however, then Moore will probably win. To make another generalization, traditional pollsters usually assume that their polls don’t have partisan non-response bias, while automated polls (and some online polls such as YouGov) generally assume that they do have it, which is part of why they’re showing such different results.

Because you’ve read so much detail about the polls, I don’t want to leave you without some characterization of the race. I still think Moore is favored, although not by much; Jones’s chances are probably somewhere in the same ballpark as Trump’s were of winning the Electoral College last November (about 30 percent).

The reason I say that is because in a state as red as Alabama, Jones needs two things to go right for him: He needs a lopsided turnout in his favor, and he needs pretty much all of the swing voters in Alabama (and there aren’t all that many of them) to vote for him. Neither of these are all that implausible. But if either one goes wrong for Jones, Moore will probably win narrowly (and if both go wrong, Moore could still win in a landslide). The stakes couldn’t be much higher for the candidates — or for the pollsters who surveyed the race.

[shanedakotamuir]

The Pete Buttigieg surge, explained

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks during a campaign stop at the Rex Theater in Manchester, New Hampshire, on November 8, 2019. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Buttigieg’s surge could to hit a major obstacle in South Carolina.

Pete Buttigieg is getting his second wind.

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor enjoyed an unexpectedly good start to his campaign — thanks in no small part to a wave of breathless media coverage — but then faded out of the top-tier contenders. Until now.

Capitalizing on steady momentum in Iowa, Buttigieg is now leading polls there, per a RealClearPolitics average of the state. He’s also on the rise in New Hampshire, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden both are slightly ahead. He also was treated like an ascendant frontrunner toward the later part of Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, fielding attacks from other candidates on stage.

The picture is starkly different in national polls, where Buttigieg hasn’t yet cracked double digits in the RealClearPolitics average. This discrepancy drives home a key point: Buttigieg is gaining popularity in the first two, overwhelmingly white early voting states, but he has yet to gain traction in more diverse states where Biden, Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders are still leading. He’s still at single digits in Nevada and South Carolina polling averages, and a recent Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina shows him at zero percent among black voters there.

Buttigieg’s campaign chalks the numbers gap up to the fact that his time spent in Iowa and New Hampshire has made his name recognition go up, and the campaign believes more time on the ground in other states will have the same effect.

“Pete has spent a lot of time in these places,” campaign spokesperson Chris Meagher told Vox. “One of the things we’ve found is the more people know Pete, the more they like him, so it’s continuing to introduce him to folks. He wasn’t a national figure. ... Pete hasn’t spent the last 20 years marinating in Washington.”

Iowa and New Hampshire are key momentum drivers, but their demographics aren’t reflective of the US as a whole. Winning the Democratic nomination rests on winning over nonwhite voters. And so far, Buttigieg has had more than a few stumbles in his outreach attempts.

“I think it’s a trust issue, I think it’s a connectivity issue,” Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic consultant, told Vox. “He’s had continual missteps from a campaign standpoint.”

Buttigieg’s surge, briefly explained

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg slowly and surely has been gaining polling ground in Iowa, a state he’s spending a lot of time and resources on. His campaign has 100 staffers and 20 offices in the state, and his campaign is depending on a good result there. That’s about on par with the number of Iowa staffers Warren and Biden has, and fewer than Sanders.

“I think we plan on winning Iowa,” a Buttigieg campaign staffer told Vox. “Iowa can definitely be a jumping-off point to success down the road.”

The candidate’s real polling breakthrough in Iowa came last weekend, when the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll conducted by veteran Iowa pollster Ann Selzer’s firm showed Buttigieg leading the pack at 25 percent, with Warren at 16 percent and Sanders and Biden each with 15 percent. An early November Monmouth University poll of Iowa also found him on top, albeit with a narrower lead.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg arrives at a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 23, 2019.

Then on Tuesday, a New Hampshire poll by Saint Anselm College Survey Center showed Buttigieg suddenly in the lead in the Granite State. The New Hampshire poll had obvious caveats; it sampled 255 likely Democratic voters, and overrepresented voters who were college educated or had gone to graduate school — a demographic Buttigieg performs well with.

This is Buttigieg’s second surge since he launched his campaign, and it comes at a time when the top tier of candidates is very fluid. Buttigieg has sat in this group for the last few weeks along with Warren, Biden, and Sanders. But Biden was the frontrunner in September, Warren was the frontrunner in October, and now Buttigieg is fighting for that mantle — at least in the earliest states.

It’s worth pointing out the Buttigieg surge isn’t quite on par with Warren’s last month. He’s still in fourth place nationally, and has significant ground to make up in states that aren’t Iowa or New Hampshire.

Selzer’s main takeaway about why the top tier is constantly fluctuating is that voters are still uneasy about who can beat President Donald Trump in the general election. While Selzer’s Iowa poll showed Buttigieg is the most well-liked candidate right now, there are still concerns in the state about his general election viability.

“There’s a skittishness about the chances of these top four candidates,” she told Vox.

Buttigieg’s campaign has been building out an impressive organization in all four early states, pollsters and political experts told Vox. He’s been fundraising at a rapid clip and using that money to build out large teams in each states to be ready to capitalize on momentum if and when the dominoes start to fall.

“It’s not an apples to apples analogy, but it’s the same strategy Obama used in 2008 which is hope to do well in Iowa and then change the dynamic suddenly he’s the frontrunner, then does well in New Hampshire, and has the infrastructure to do well in Nevada,” said Jon Ralston, a Nevada political journalist and the dean of that state’s press corps.

Buttigieg is struggling with black voters

As well as Buttigieg might be doing in Iowa and New Hampshire this month, he still has a big problem: persuading black voters in South Carolina.

Multiple polls, including ones from Quinnipiac and Winthrop University, have shown Buttigieg at zero percent with South Carolina’s African American voters, who make up 60 percent of the state’s overall electorate.

Black political experts in the state told Vox that despite the Buttigieg campaign’s outreach to the community, voters are looking to black surrogates to vouch for Buttigieg personally. And so far, they’re not seeing much.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg listens to the Sunday service at the Kenneth Moore Transformation Center in Rock Hill, South Carolina on October 27, 2019.

“The questions I continue to get asked is, ‘show me some other African Americans somewhere else in America who have Pete Buttigieg’s back,’” said Anton Gunn, Obama’s 2008 South Carolina political director, who is not affiliated with any current campaign. “Where are the other leaders in South Bend? If they’re not down here regularly, then that speaks volumes.”

South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who has not endorsed any candidate yet, told Vox he agrees that not a lot of people have heard of Buttigieg. And what they’ve heard isn’t necessarily positive, Kimpson added. Buttigieg has apologized for how he handled race relations as mayor of South Bend, including firing the city’s black police chief, and later criticized over an officer-involved shooting of a black man named Eric Logan.

“People don’t know him, and what they do know about him is not impressive in terms of his history on African American issues,” Kimpson said. “It did not help him having to spend weeks handling a racial incident in his own city, and the media exposing his record with respect to the lack of diversity with his chief positions in his own city.”

Buttigieg’s campaign has had more stumbles in its attempt to do outreach to black voters, including using a stock photo of a woman from Kenya on its plan to address racial inequality.

Furthermore, Kimpson said momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire likely won’t move the needle much for black voters in South Carolina, unless that momentum belongs to a black candidate like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris.

“I don’t think African Americans will be swayed by what happens in New Hampshire or Iowa,” he said. “Pete Buttigieg is not Barack Obama.”

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[timalexanderdollery]

The Pete Buttigieg surge, explained

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks during a campaign stop at the Rex Theater in Manchester, New Hampshire, on November 8, 2019. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Buttigieg’s surge could to hit a major obstacle in South Carolina.

Pete Buttigieg is getting his second wind.

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor enjoyed an unexpectedly good start to his campaign — thanks in no small part to a wave of breathless media coverage — but then faded out of the top-tier contenders. Until now.

Capitalizing on steady momentum in Iowa, Buttigieg is now leading polls there, per a RealClearPolitics average of the state. He’s also on the rise in New Hampshire, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden both are slightly ahead. He also was treated like an ascendant frontrunner toward the later part of Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, fielding attacks from other candidates on stage.

The picture is starkly different in national polls, where Buttigieg hasn’t yet cracked double digits in the RealClearPolitics average. This discrepancy drives home a key point: Buttigieg is gaining popularity in the first two, overwhelmingly white early voting states, but he has yet to gain traction in more diverse states where Biden, Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders are still leading. He’s still at single digits in Nevada and South Carolina polling averages, and a recent Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina shows him at zero percent among black voters there.

Buttigieg’s campaign chalks the numbers gap up to the fact that his time spent in Iowa and New Hampshire has made his name recognition go up, and the campaign believes more time on the ground in other states will have the same effect.

“Pete has spent a lot of time in these places,” campaign spokesperson Chris Meagher told Vox. “One of the things we’ve found is the more people know Pete, the more they like him, so it’s continuing to introduce him to folks. He wasn’t a national figure. ... Pete hasn’t spent the last 20 years marinating in Washington.”

Iowa and New Hampshire are key momentum drivers, but their demographics aren’t reflective of the US as a whole. Winning the Democratic nomination rests on winning over nonwhite voters. And so far, Buttigieg has had more than a few stumbles in his outreach attempts.

“I think it’s a trust issue, I think it’s a connectivity issue,” Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic consultant, told Vox. “He’s had continual missteps from a campaign standpoint.”

Buttigieg’s surge, briefly explained

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg slowly and surely has been gaining polling ground in Iowa, a state he’s spending a lot of time and resources on. His campaign has 100 staffers and 20 offices in the state, and his campaign is depending on a good result there. That’s about on par with the number of Iowa staffers Warren and Biden has, and fewer than Sanders.

“I think we plan on winning Iowa,” a Buttigieg campaign staffer told Vox. “Iowa can definitely be a jumping-off point to success down the road.”

The candidate’s real polling breakthrough in Iowa came last weekend, when the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll conducted by veteran Iowa pollster Ann Selzer’s firm showed Buttigieg leading the pack at 25 percent, with Warren at 16 percent and Sanders and Biden each with 15 percent. An early November Monmouth University poll of Iowa also found him on top, albeit with a narrower lead.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg arrives at a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 23, 2019.

Then on Tuesday, a New Hampshire poll by Saint Anselm College Survey Center showed Buttigieg suddenly in the lead in the Granite State. The New Hampshire poll had obvious caveats; it sampled 255 likely Democratic voters, and overrepresented voters who were college educated or had gone to graduate school — a demographic Buttigieg performs well with.

This is Buttigieg’s second surge since he launched his campaign, and it comes at a time when the top tier of candidates is very fluid. Buttigieg has sat in this group for the last few weeks along with Warren, Biden, and Sanders. But Biden was the frontrunner in September, Warren was the frontrunner in October, and now Buttigieg is fighting for that mantle — at least in the earliest states.

It’s worth pointing out the Buttigieg surge isn’t quite on par with Warren’s last month. He’s still in fourth place nationally, and has significant ground to make up in states that aren’t Iowa or New Hampshire.

Selzer’s main takeaway about why the top tier is constantly fluctuating is that voters are still uneasy about who can beat President Donald Trump in the general election. While Selzer’s Iowa poll showed Buttigieg is the most well-liked candidate right now, there are still concerns in the state about his general election viability.

“There’s a skittishness about the chances of these top four candidates,” she told Vox.

Buttigieg’s campaign has been building out an impressive organization in all four early states, pollsters and political experts told Vox. He’s been fundraising at a rapid clip and using that money to build out large teams in each states to be ready to capitalize on momentum if and when the dominoes start to fall.

“It’s not an apples to apples analogy, but it’s the same strategy Obama used in 2008 which is hope to do well in Iowa and then change the dynamic suddenly he’s the frontrunner, then does well in New Hampshire, and has the infrastructure to do well in Nevada,” said Jon Ralston, a Nevada political journalist and the dean of that state’s press corps.

Buttigieg is struggling with black voters

As well as Buttigieg might be doing in Iowa and New Hampshire this month, he still has a big problem: persuading black voters in South Carolina.

Multiple polls, including ones from Quinnipiac and Winthrop University, have shown Buttigieg at zero percent with South Carolina’s African American voters, who make up 60 percent of the state’s overall electorate.

Black political experts in the state told Vox that despite the Buttigieg campaign’s outreach to the community, voters are looking to black surrogates to vouch for Buttigieg personally. And so far, they’re not seeing much.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg listens to the Sunday service at the Kenneth Moore Transformation Center in Rock Hill, South Carolina on October 27, 2019.

“The questions I continue to get asked is, ‘show me some other African Americans somewhere else in America who have Pete Buttigieg’s back,’” said Anton Gunn, Obama’s 2008 South Carolina political director, who is not affiliated with any current campaign. “Where are the other leaders in South Bend? If they’re not down here regularly, then that speaks volumes.”

South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who has not endorsed any candidate yet, told Vox he agrees that not a lot of people have heard of Buttigieg. And what they’ve heard isn’t necessarily positive, Kimpson added. Buttigieg has apologized for how he handled race relations as mayor of South Bend, including firing the city’s black police chief, and later criticized over an officer-involved shooting of a black man named Eric Logan.

“People don’t know him, and what they do know about him is not impressive in terms of his history on African American issues,” Kimpson said. “It did not help him having to spend weeks handling a racial incident in his own city, and the media exposing his record with respect to the lack of diversity with his chief positions in his own city.”

Buttigieg’s campaign has had more stumbles in its attempt to do outreach to black voters, including using a stock photo of a woman from Kenya on its plan to address racial inequality.

Furthermore, Kimpson said momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire likely won’t move the needle much for black voters in South Carolina, unless that momentum belongs to a black candidate like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris.

“I don’t think African Americans will be swayed by what happens in New Hampshire or Iowa,” he said. “Pete Buttigieg is not Barack Obama.”

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[gracieyvonnehunter]

The Pete Buttigieg surge, explained

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks during a campaign stop at the Rex Theater in Manchester, New Hampshire, on November 8, 2019. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Buttigieg’s surge could to hit a major obstacle in South Carolina.

Pete Buttigieg is getting his second wind.

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor enjoyed an unexpectedly good start to his campaign — thanks in no small part to a wave of breathless media coverage — but then faded out of the top-tier contenders. Until now.

Capitalizing on steady momentum in Iowa, Buttigieg is now leading polls there, per a RealClearPolitics average of the state. He’s also on the rise in New Hampshire, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden both are slightly ahead. He also was treated like an ascendant frontrunner toward the later part of Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, fielding attacks from other candidates on stage.

The picture is starkly different in national polls, where Buttigieg hasn’t yet cracked double digits in the RealClearPolitics average. This discrepancy drives home a key point: Buttigieg is gaining popularity in the first two, overwhelmingly white early voting states, but he has yet to gain traction in more diverse states where Biden, Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders are still leading. He’s still at single digits in Nevada and South Carolina polling averages, and a recent Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina shows him at zero percent among black voters there.

Buttigieg’s campaign chalks the numbers gap up to the fact that his time spent in Iowa and New Hampshire has made his name recognition go up, and the campaign believes more time on the ground in other states will have the same effect.

“Pete has spent a lot of time in these places,” campaign spokesperson Chris Meagher told Vox. “One of the things we’ve found is the more people know Pete, the more they like him, so it’s continuing to introduce him to folks. He wasn’t a national figure. ... Pete hasn’t spent the last 20 years marinating in Washington.”

Iowa and New Hampshire are key momentum drivers, but their demographics aren’t reflective of the US as a whole. Winning the Democratic nomination rests on winning over nonwhite voters. And so far, Buttigieg has had more than a few stumbles in his outreach attempts.

“I think it’s a trust issue, I think it’s a connectivity issue,” Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic consultant, told Vox. “He’s had continual missteps from a campaign standpoint.”

Buttigieg’s surge, briefly explained

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg slowly and surely has been gaining polling ground in Iowa, a state he’s spending a lot of time and resources on. His campaign has 100 staffers and 20 offices in the state, and his campaign is depending on a good result there. That’s about on par with the number of Iowa staffers Warren and Biden has, and fewer than Sanders.

“I think we plan on winning Iowa,” a Buttigieg campaign staffer told Vox. “Iowa can definitely be a jumping-off point to success down the road.”

The candidate’s real polling breakthrough in Iowa came last weekend, when the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll conducted by veteran Iowa pollster Ann Selzer’s firm showed Buttigieg leading the pack at 25 percent, with Warren at 16 percent and Sanders and Biden each with 15 percent. An early November Monmouth University poll of Iowa also found him on top, albeit with a narrower lead.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg arrives at a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 23, 2019.

Then on Tuesday, a New Hampshire poll by Saint Anselm College Survey Center showed Buttigieg suddenly in the lead in the Granite State. The New Hampshire poll had obvious caveats; it sampled 255 likely Democratic voters, and overrepresented voters who were college educated or had gone to graduate school — a demographic Buttigieg performs well with.

This is Buttigieg’s second surge since he launched his campaign, and it comes at a time when the top tier of candidates is very fluid. Buttigieg has sat in this group for the last few weeks along with Warren, Biden, and Sanders. But Biden was the frontrunner in September, Warren was the frontrunner in October, and now Buttigieg is fighting for that mantle — at least in the earliest states.

It’s worth pointing out the Buttigieg surge isn’t quite on par with Warren’s last month. He’s still in fourth place nationally, and has significant ground to make up in states that aren’t Iowa or New Hampshire.

Selzer’s main takeaway about why the top tier is constantly fluctuating is that voters are still uneasy about who can beat President Donald Trump in the general election. While Selzer’s Iowa poll showed Buttigieg is the most well-liked candidate right now, there are still concerns in the state about his general election viability.

“There’s a skittishness about the chances of these top four candidates,” she told Vox.

Buttigieg’s campaign has been building out an impressive organization in all four early states, pollsters and political experts told Vox. He’s been fundraising at a rapid clip and using that money to build out large teams in each states to be ready to capitalize on momentum if and when the dominoes start to fall.

“It’s not an apples to apples analogy, but it’s the same strategy Obama used in 2008 which is hope to do well in Iowa and then change the dynamic suddenly he’s the frontrunner, then does well in New Hampshire, and has the infrastructure to do well in Nevada,” said Jon Ralston, a Nevada political journalist and the dean of that state’s press corps.

Buttigieg is struggling with black voters

As well as Buttigieg might be doing in Iowa and New Hampshire this month, he still has a big problem: persuading black voters in South Carolina.

Multiple polls, including ones from Quinnipiac and Winthrop University, have shown Buttigieg at zero percent with South Carolina’s African American voters, who make up 60 percent of the state’s overall electorate.

Black political experts in the state told Vox that despite the Buttigieg campaign’s outreach to the community, voters are looking to black surrogates to vouch for Buttigieg personally. And so far, they’re not seeing much.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg listens to the Sunday service at the Kenneth Moore Transformation Center in Rock Hill, South Carolina on October 27, 2019.

“The questions I continue to get asked is, ‘show me some other African Americans somewhere else in America who have Pete Buttigieg’s back,’” said Anton Gunn, Obama’s 2008 South Carolina political director, who is not affiliated with any current campaign. “Where are the other leaders in South Bend? If they’re not down here regularly, then that speaks volumes.”

South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who has not endorsed any candidate yet, told Vox he agrees that not a lot of people have heard of Buttigieg. And what they’ve heard isn’t necessarily positive, Kimpson added. Buttigieg has apologized for how he handled race relations as mayor of South Bend, including firing the city’s black police chief, and later criticized over an officer-involved shooting of a black man named Eric Logan.

“People don’t know him, and what they do know about him is not impressive in terms of his history on African American issues,” Kimpson said. “It did not help him having to spend weeks handling a racial incident in his own city, and the media exposing his record with respect to the lack of diversity with his chief positions in his own city.”

Buttigieg’s campaign has had more stumbles in its attempt to do outreach to black voters, including using a stock photo of a woman from Kenya on its plan to address racial inequality.

Furthermore, Kimpson said momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire likely won’t move the needle much for black voters in South Carolina, unless that momentum belongs to a black candidate like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris.

“I don’t think African Americans will be swayed by what happens in New Hampshire or Iowa,” he said. “Pete Buttigieg is not Barack Obama.”

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Liz Skalka at HuffPost:

President-elect Donald Trump filed suit Monday night against the Des Moines Register newspaper and veteran Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer over a pre-election poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris beating Trump in a state he easily carried just days later.

Trump is alleging the Nov. 2 poll that had Harris 3 percentage points ahead of him amounted to “brazen election interference” and contained “leaked” and “manipulated” data. Filed in Polk County, Iowa, under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, the lawsuit seeks an order preventing Selzer from releasing “any further deceptive polls” as well as unspecified damages. Trump’s lawyers, in a filing first reported by Fox News Digital, accused the “defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party” of hoping “the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.”

The president-elect had teased possible legal action against the newspaper and pollster during a press conference Monday, where he labeled the poll’s publication a “fraud” while also praising Selzer for her past accurate surveys. Trump’s lawsuit names as defendants the Register; its parent company, Gannett, which owns USA Today; and Selzer and her polling firm, Selzer & Company. Selzer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday, but the Register defended its decision to publish the outlier poll.

[...] The final “Iowa Poll,” from a pollster who had long been considered the first-in-the-nation presidential caucus state’s “gold standard,” sharply deviated from the election outcome in the traditionally red state. Selzer last week vehemently denied tweaking her data to sway the election. “They’re saying that this was election interference, which is a crime. So, the idea that I intentionally set up to deliver this response, when I’ve never done that before — I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do it — it’s not my ethic,” she said. The suit accuses Selzer, who has shared polling crosstabs and other data undergirding the results, and the newspaper of orchestrating the poll’s outcome to benefit Harris — who ultimately lost every swing state and the popular vote to Trump.

Authoritarian anti-free press bully Donald Trump sues the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer over the Selzer & Company poll that had Kamala Harris leading Iowa by 3 on the false basis that the poll amounted to “brazen election interference” in the Trump v. Selzer case.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Trump sues Iowa paper and pollster in latest attack on the press

[corneliusreignallen]

The Pete Buttigieg surge, explained

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks during a campaign stop at the Rex Theater in Manchester, New Hampshire, on November 8, 2019. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Buttigieg’s surge could to hit a major obstacle in South Carolina.

Pete Buttigieg is getting his second wind.

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor enjoyed an unexpectedly good start to his campaign — thanks in no small part to a wave of breathless media coverage — but then faded out of the top-tier contenders. Until now.

Capitalizing on steady momentum in Iowa, Buttigieg is now leading polls there, per a RealClearPolitics average of the state. He’s also on the rise in New Hampshire, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden both are slightly ahead. He also was treated like an ascendant frontrunner toward the later part of Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, fielding attacks from other candidates on stage.

The picture is starkly different in national polls, where Buttigieg hasn’t yet cracked double digits in the RealClearPolitics average. This discrepancy drives home a key point: Buttigieg is gaining popularity in the first two, overwhelmingly white early voting states, but he has yet to gain traction in more diverse states where Biden, Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders are still leading. He’s still at single digits in Nevada and South Carolina polling averages, and a recent Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina shows him at zero percent among black voters there.

Buttigieg’s campaign chalks the numbers gap up to the fact that his time spent in Iowa and New Hampshire has made his name recognition go up, and the campaign believes more time on the ground in other states will have the same effect.

“Pete has spent a lot of time in these places,” campaign spokesperson Chris Meagher told Vox. “One of the things we’ve found is the more people know Pete, the more they like him, so it’s continuing to introduce him to folks. He wasn’t a national figure. ... Pete hasn’t spent the last 20 years marinating in Washington.”

Iowa and New Hampshire are key momentum drivers, but their demographics aren’t reflective of the US as a whole. Winning the Democratic nomination rests on winning over nonwhite voters. And so far, Buttigieg has had more than a few stumbles in his outreach attempts.

“I think it’s a trust issue, I think it’s a connectivity issue,” Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic consultant, told Vox. “He’s had continual missteps from a campaign standpoint.”

Buttigieg’s surge, briefly explained

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg slowly and surely has been gaining polling ground in Iowa, a state he’s spending a lot of time and resources on. His campaign has 100 staffers and 20 offices in the state, and his campaign is depending on a good result there. That’s about on par with the number of Iowa staffers Warren and Biden has, and fewer than Sanders.

“I think we plan on winning Iowa,” a Buttigieg campaign staffer told Vox. “Iowa can definitely be a jumping-off point to success down the road.”

The candidate’s real polling breakthrough in Iowa came last weekend, when the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll conducted by veteran Iowa pollster Ann Selzer’s firm showed Buttigieg leading the pack at 25 percent, with Warren at 16 percent and Sanders and Biden each with 15 percent. An early November Monmouth University poll of Iowa also found him on top, albeit with a narrower lead.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg arrives at a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 23, 2019.

Then on Tuesday, a New Hampshire poll by Saint Anselm College Survey Center showed Buttigieg suddenly in the lead in the Granite State. The New Hampshire poll had obvious caveats; it sampled 255 likely Democratic voters, and overrepresented voters who were college educated or had gone to graduate school — a demographic Buttigieg performs well with.

This is Buttigieg’s second surge since he launched his campaign, and it comes at a time when the top tier of candidates is very fluid. Buttigieg has sat in this group for the last few weeks along with Warren, Biden, and Sanders. But Biden was the frontrunner in September, Warren was the frontrunner in October, and now Buttigieg is fighting for that mantle — at least in the earliest states.

It’s worth pointing out the Buttigieg surge isn’t quite on par with Warren’s last month. He’s still in fourth place nationally, and has significant ground to make up in states that aren’t Iowa or New Hampshire.

Selzer’s main takeaway about why the top tier is constantly fluctuating is that voters are still uneasy about who can beat President Donald Trump in the general election. While Selzer’s Iowa poll showed Buttigieg is the most well-liked candidate right now, there are still concerns in the state about his general election viability.

“There’s a skittishness about the chances of these top four candidates,” she told Vox.

Buttigieg’s campaign has been building out an impressive organization in all four early states, pollsters and political experts told Vox. He’s been fundraising at a rapid clip and using that money to build out large teams in each states to be ready to capitalize on momentum if and when the dominoes start to fall.

“It’s not an apples to apples analogy, but it’s the same strategy Obama used in 2008 which is hope to do well in Iowa and then change the dynamic suddenly he’s the frontrunner, then does well in New Hampshire, and has the infrastructure to do well in Nevada,” said Jon Ralston, a Nevada political journalist and the dean of that state’s press corps.

Buttigieg is struggling with black voters

As well as Buttigieg might be doing in Iowa and New Hampshire this month, he still has a big problem: persuading black voters in South Carolina.

Multiple polls, including ones from Quinnipiac and Winthrop University, have shown Buttigieg at zero percent with South Carolina’s African American voters, who make up 60 percent of the state’s overall electorate.

Black political experts in the state told Vox that despite the Buttigieg campaign’s outreach to the community, voters are looking to black surrogates to vouch for Buttigieg personally. And so far, they’re not seeing much.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg listens to the Sunday service at the Kenneth Moore Transformation Center in Rock Hill, South Carolina on October 27, 2019.

“The questions I continue to get asked is, ‘show me some other African Americans somewhere else in America who have Pete Buttigieg’s back,’” said Anton Gunn, Obama’s 2008 South Carolina political director, who is not affiliated with any current campaign. “Where are the other leaders in South Bend? If they’re not down here regularly, then that speaks volumes.”

South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who has not endorsed any candidate yet, told Vox he agrees that not a lot of people have heard of Buttigieg. And what they’ve heard isn’t necessarily positive, Kimpson added. Buttigieg has apologized for how he handled race relations as mayor of South Bend, including firing the city’s black police chief, and later criticized over an officer-involved shooting of a black man named Eric Logan.

“People don’t know him, and what they do know about him is not impressive in terms of his history on African American issues,” Kimpson said. “It did not help him having to spend weeks handling a racial incident in his own city, and the media exposing his record with respect to the lack of diversity with his chief positions in his own city.”

Buttigieg’s campaign has had more stumbles in its attempt to do outreach to black voters, including using a stock photo of a woman from Kenya on its plan to address racial inequality.

Furthermore, Kimpson said momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire likely won’t move the needle much for black voters in South Carolina, unless that momentum belongs to a black candidate like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris.

“I don’t think African Americans will be swayed by what happens in New Hampshire or Iowa,” he said. “Pete Buttigieg is not Barack Obama.”

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[thisdaynews]

Biden nosedives in early-state polls

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/biden-nosedives-in-early-state-polls/

Biden nosedives in early-state polls

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s descent in the polls has been months in the making. “Biden has a challenger now. He didn’t have one before,” said Ryan Tyson, a Florida-based pollster. | Joshua Lott/Getty Images

2020 elections

Recent surveys show the former veep’s leads have vanished in Iowa and New Hampshire, while his South Carolina firewall shows signs of cracking.

Joe Biden’s poll numbers are crumbling in the early nominating states that matter most.

Once the dominant front-runner in the Democratic primary, Biden is now marginally trailing Elizabeth Warren in the first caucus state of Iowa and the first primary state of New Hampshire. His South Carolina firewall shows signs of cracking and he’s losing his once-overwhelming lead in Florida, according to a raft of recent polling.

Story Continued Below

Biden’s descent has been months in the making, the result of continuous fire from progressives, questions about his age and stamina, a drumbeat of negative coverage over lackluster debate performances and frequent misstatements, according to pollsters and party insiders. They also point to a campaign message that at times overemphasized attacking President Donald Trump and his claimto be the “most electable” Democrat in the field.

But perhaps the biggest factor has been the rise of Warren, the Massachusetts senator who has served up a steady diet of grassroots outreach and in-depth policy proposals that have endeared her to progressives.

“Biden has a challenger now. He didn’t have one before,” said Ryan Tyson, a Florida-based pollster who shared three large surveys he just completed in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida that show Biden slipping and Warren gaining.

While national polls have shown less movement in the race, the state-based surveys provide a more usefulindication of the trajectory of the primary.

“If you see Warren winning in Iowa and New Hampshire back to back, whoa! Geez! Biden starts losing his argument about electability,” Tyson, who typically surveys for Republicans, said. “Can Biden hang on to South Carolina if he loses in the other early states? I don’t know.”

The former vice president continues to lead most national polls. He’s run ahead of Trump in general election matchups in every major poll conducted this year. But the downward trend in Biden’s primary election top-line numbers and favorability ratings— which began long before reports surfaced recently detailing howPresident Donald Trump pushedUkraine to investigate old business ties involving the former vice president’s son — suggests several bruising months have taken a toll.

“Biden’s support was always soft. That’s the key,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Unlike some of the other candidates, Biden’s support isn’t as locked in. He doesn’t have that ‘it’ factor.”

The Biden campaign, which has bristled at media coverage of the candidate and the attention paid to polls, would not comment for this article.

With more than four months until Iowa’s Feb. 3 caucus, there is plenty of time for the dynamics of the race to change. But there’s also cause for some alarm for Biden. In New Hampshire, Tyson’s just-completed 600-likely voter poll shows Warren with 18 percent of the vote and Biden 15 percent in an open-ended ballot question. It’s a dramatic change from his last poll, with Biden dropping 18 points while Warren gained 7 — a 25-point shift.

While the methodologies differ slightly, those New Hampshire numbers resemble a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, which had Warren leading Biden by 2 points in a survey of 401 voters.

“We are seeing in our poll that people are saying Warren is electable. She’s pragmatic,” said Murray. “I heard that when I talked to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and we’re seeing that in polls now.”

Similarly, since May, Biden has dropped by 18 points in South Carolina, though he still remains in first place there with 19 percent of the vote, according to Tyson’s 600-voter poll.

Tyson’s polls were conducted for a political nonprofit, Let’s Preserve the American Dream. It does not disclose its donors and has links to Florida business interests, but Tyson says it has also worked with Democratic-leaning as well as conservative groups.

Warren, who has spent relatively little time and money in South Carolina, has gained just a point since May and has 9 percent support in the poll. But she’s now in second because Bernie Sanders has tumbled there as he has in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Biden’s level of support in South Carolina makes it his firewall state, but even in South Carolina there are troubling signs of erosion. While he remains on top, amongblack voters, who are more than 60 percent of the Democratic electorate, Biden has plummeted 19 points in Tyson’s polls. That’s a potential leading indicator of the problems he could face after South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary when many of the minority-heavy Southeastern states — as well as Texas and California — beginning voting on Super Tuesday, March 3, and thereafter.

Florida, where about 28 percent of the Democratic primary electorate is black, votes March 17. Biden is in first there with 24 percent of the Democratic vote, losing 15 points since May in Tyson’s polls. Warren moved into second with 11 percent, a 6-point increase while Sanders is in third with 5 percent, an 11-point loss since before the first candidate debate.

The percentage of Democratic voters who were undecided also shot up by double-digits in polls of the state.

In Iowa, Warren has pulled ahead of Joe Biden — marginally — for the first time, according to the latest Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll released Saturday. Pollster J. Ann Selzer’s highly regarded survey of caucus-goers showed Warren was benefiting from an enthusiasm gap — 32 percent said they’re “extremely enthusiastic” about caucusing for the Massachusetts senator, compared with 22 percent those who support the former vice president.

Selzer said that Warren’s “footprint” of voters — the percentage of people saying she’s a second choice or that they would consider caucusing for her — is bigger than Biden’s by 10 points.

Overall, Warren has 22 percent support to Biden’s 20 percent — a net 11-point shift in Warren’s favor since the last Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register in June.

“Biden’s favorability dropped, his unfavorable numbers doubled. In the absence of any context, it’s not bad. But Elizabeth Warren’s numbers are strikingly good,” Selzer said.

Selzer noted that Biden is “still a force” and that the poll she took was “worse for Bernie Sanders.”

Compared to the other early states, there’s a dearth in polling in third-in-the-nation Nevada. A survey released Tuesday from USA Today/Suffolk University showed Biden hanging onto a 23 percent to 19 percent lead over Warren, whose campaign in the state has earned high marks earned high marks from Democrats.

Nationally, Biden’s top-line numbers haven’t fallen as dramatically as in the early states. But pollster Peter Hart said his last national survey for The Wall Street Journal and NBC showed signs of weakness. In April, when Biden first officially entered the race, 32 percent said they were enthusiastic about backing him. In the most recent poll, 23 percent said that of Biden.

Hart said Biden could experience a rallying effect in recent days from Democrats, who are moving forward with impeachment plans over Trump’s alleged threat to cut off U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless officials there launched an investigation into Biden and his son.

But beyond talking about Trump, Hart said, he hasn’t heard Biden emphasize policy the way Warren and others have. And that could leave voters wanting more.

“Instead of controlling the race, the race is controlling him,” Hart said. “The hardest thing to do is be a front-runner without an agenda when compared to the candidates to the left of him who are presenting bold plans that galvanize people where they say, ‘I want to be with Joe Biden.’”

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[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

Biden Still Leads in 2020 Iowa Poll, Three Others Fight for Second

Former Vice President Joe Biden still leads the Democratic pack of presidential contenders in a poll of Iowa voters released on Saturday, with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg in a tight battle for second place.

Biden is the first choice of 24% of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, the state that kicks off the presidential nominating race next February, in the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

Sanders, a U.S. senator, is the first choice for 16% of respondents, while Warren, also a U.S. senator, and Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, are at 15% and 14%, respectively. No other candidate managed double-digits.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris registered 7%, and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke are both at 2%. Seven candidates registered 1%.

“We’re starting to see the people who are planning to caucus start to solidify,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Des Moines-based Selzer & Co, which conducted the poll. “There’s a lot more commitment than we normally see this early. And some of these candidates who’ve been under the radar start to surface and compete with Joe Biden.”

She said many candidates in the large field had failed to make a breakthrough. Nine did not register support in the poll.

“There’s always been a question mark as to how many can get any real traction,” Selzer said.

The Register’s Iowa poll has a long track record of relative accuracy in the state.

More than 20 Democrats are vying for the right to challenge Republican President Donald Trump, who will formally launch his re-election bid on June 18. Biden has been the consistent leader in most national and state polls since he first entered the race in late April. Sanders runs second to Biden in most polls.

The Register said the poll methodology changed from its last few surveys. As a result of new caucus rules, the poll this time included a blend of those who plan to attend a caucus in person and those who will participate in a virtual caucus online or by phone.

That makes the results of this poll not directly comparable to past polls of the presidential field, the Register said. Biden also led in the last poll in March, with Sanders in second. Warren and Harris were in third and fourth place in March, and Buttigieg was largely unknown.

The poll said Biden showed a sign of potential weakness, with only 29% of those who listed him as their first choice saying they were “extremely enthusiastic.” The number is substantially higher, 39%, among all those who list another candidate as their first choice.

The Iowa poll was released on the eve of the biggest gathering of the Democratic race so far, an Iowa state party dinner in Cedar Rapids that will feature 5-minute speeches by 19 Democratic candidates.

The poll was conducted between June 2 and 5, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

(Reporting by John Whitesides; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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[global-news-station]

DES MOINES:  Former Vice President Joe Biden still leads the Democratic pack of presidential contenders in a poll of Iowa voters released on Saturday, with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg in a tight battle for second place.

Biden is the first choice of 24% of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, the state that kicks off the presidential nominating race next February, in the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

Sanders, a U.S. senator, is the first choice for 16% of respondents, while Warren, also a U.S. senator, and Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, are at 15% and 14%, respectively. No other candidate managed double-digits.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris registered 7%, and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke are both at 2%. Seven candidates registered 1%.

“We’re starting to see the people who are planning to caucus start to solidify,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Des Moines-based Selzer & Co, which conducted the poll. “There’s a lot more commitment than we normally see this early. And some of these candidates who’ve been under the radar start to surface and compete with Joe Biden.”

She said many candidates in the large field had failed to make a breakthrough. Nine did not register support in the poll.

“There’s always been a question mark as to how many can get any real traction,” Selzer said.

The Register’s Iowa poll has a long track record of relative accuracy in the state.

More than 20 Democrats are vying for the right to challenge Republican President Donald Trump, who will formally launch his re-election bid on June 18. Biden has been the consistent leader in most national and state polls since he first entered the race in late April. Sanders runs second to Biden in most polls.

The Register said the poll methodology changed from its last few surveys. As a result of new caucus rules, the poll this time included a blend of those who plan to attend a caucus in person and those who will participate in a virtual caucus online or by phone.

That makes the results of this poll not directly comparable to past polls of the presidential field, the Register said. Biden also led in the last poll in March, with Sanders in second. Warren and Harris were in third and fourth place in March, and Buttigieg was largely unknown.

The poll said Biden showed a sign of potential weakness, with only 29% of those who listed him as their first choice saying they were “extremely enthusiastic.” The number is substantially higher, 39%, among all those who list another candidate as their first choice.

The post Biden still leads in 2020 Iowa poll, three others fight for second appeared first on ARYNEWS.

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[corneliusreignallen]

The state of the 2020 Democratic primary

Supporters cheer for former Vice President and democratic candidate Joe Biden in Concord, New Hampshire, on November 8, 2019. | Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

Democratic voters aren’t sure who they want to be the nominee — just that they want someone who can beat Trump.

With fewer than 75 days until the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic presidential primary is very much in flux.

In case anyone thought that was no longer true, and that the group of frontrunners — which was first limited to former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, then grew slowly over the summer to include Sen. Elizabeth Warren — was now set, think again.

That group has expanded to include South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — at least in an early state or two. He has risen to the top of recent Iowa polls and is also doing increasingly well in New Hampshire.

Of course, it’s difficult to tell at this stage who is actually leading the race, and it is still far too early to predict who will become the nominee. Not least because people are still jumping into the race, or at least flirting with the idea.

But there are a couple trends shaping the race.

In other early states like South Carolina and Nevada, Biden maintains a sizable lead, with Warren trailing in second. Nationally, polling shows a close three-way race between the former vice president and his two main progressive rivals, Warren and Sanders.

But there seems to be a lingering uncertainty about the field of candidates broadly, and Biden specifically — if Buttigieg’s rise, and the late entrances of former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and possibly New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are any sign.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Democratic presidential candidate, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg greets people at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 18, 2019.

Amid this uncertainty, each candidate has worked to build their coalitions by leaning into their established brands.

Warren — who had a brief stint as the race’s Iowa and national frontrunner — has responded to increasing attacks from her rivals with policy proposals, releasing a detailed plan to pay for and pass her vision of Medicare-for-all. She’s also seemingly delighted in her increasingly antagonistic relationship with America’s ultra-wealthy, highlighting the work she’d do to rein in Wall Street. Sanders, who paused his campaign for a time following a heart attack, has redoubled his efforts to spread a message of an inclusive revolution, winning high profile endorsements in the process.

David Becker/Getty Images

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) cheer during the Nevada Democrats’ “First in the West” event on November 17, 2019.

Currently, which candidate is in the lead depends on where you look, on demographics, and on how certain each candidate’s current supporters are that they will vote and caucus for them. Spoiler: most say they could change their minds.

Biden remains the candidate to beat

Biden became the race’s frontrunner before he even entered the race — ahead of his official announcement in May, his national polling average was 41 percent. His polling is no longer quite as strong but he remains the frontrunner nationally, with a polling average of around 27 percent.

However, this lead has not insulated him from challenges by those hoping to replace him as the main alternative to the race’s progressive frontrunners, Warren and Sanders. Patrick has said he wants to be the candidate for the “woke,” while “leaving room for the still waking.” And Bloomberg has signaled his campaign would center around a more moderate message as well.

Perhaps chief among these candidates is Buttigieg, who has said, “If you want the left-most possible candidate, you’ve got a clear choice. If you want the candidate with the most years in Washington, you’ve got a clear choice. For everybody else, I just might be your person.”

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

People listen to Democratic presidential candidate South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg speak during a town hall event in Walpole, New Hampshire, on November 10, 2019.

Voters in two early states seem to be responding well to Buttigieg’s pitch, particularly in Iowa, where a November Des Moines Register/CNN poll found that Buttigieg has 25 percent support in the state, trailed by Warren with 16 percent, and Sanders and Biden with 15 each. Respondents in that poll said they favored Buttigieg because he was neither too liberal or conservative — 63 percent said he was ideologically just right.

A November Monmouth University poll turned out similar results, with Buttigieg leading the field with 22 percent support in the state, albeit with a much narrower lead. He doesn’t fare as well in New Hampshire — where recent polling suggests an open race with Warren, Sanders, and Biden each topping one recent poll — but he is nevertheless only a few percentage points behind. (There was one recent New Hampshire poll where Buttigieg had a 10-point lead, but it faced some methodological questions).

While Buttigieg is making a strong case for himself in Iowa and New Hampshire, what casts doubt on Buttigieg assuming the race’s more centrist mantle are the states that come directly after, where polls mirror national ones more closely.

Those states — South Carolina and Nevada — have more diverse populations, and Biden leads among voters of color in both places by a significant margin. For instance, a November Quinnipiac University South Carolina poll found Biden’s support among black voters to be at 44 percent. Buttigieg’s support was about zero.

And the latter’s attempts to win over black voters — a key Democratic constituency — have been mostly marred by controversy, including questions about his handling of a South Bend officer killing a black man, concerns his campaign may have leaked polling suggesting his poor black support is due to homophobia, and complaints from black leaders that he misrepresented their level of support for him.

All this means that Biden does not necessarily need to be alarmed by Buttigieg’s rise in Iowa, Iowa Ipsos vice president and polling expert Clifford Young told Vox, and that — at least for now — it is difficult to predict how a Buttigieg win in that state (which remains, despite his polling there, one possible outcome of many) would affect races in New Hampshire or South Carolina. It also provides an opening for a candidate of similar ideology who is more readily able to build a diverse coalition.

“Buttigieg performs better than anyone, and that suggests he has pretty good potential,” Young said. “It doesn’t mean he’s going to realize it, but he does.”

Sanders is back after a health scare and racking up endorsements — though his polling remains consistent

Sanders is not having the same sort of moment. His support nationally has been incredibly consistent for months. Since May, his polling average has vacillated between 14 and 18 percent, and his support in early states has been relatively steady as well, ranging from the mid-teens to the low 20s. Morning Consult’s early state polling average puts him at 20 percent.

Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer told the Des Moines Register a large part of this consistency has to do with how engaged Sanders’s backers are. In Iowa, 51 percent of these voters said they were “extremely enthusiastic” about the senator’s candidacy; the next closest candidate in terms of enthusiasm was Warren, of whom 35 percent of her backers said they are extremely enthusiastic.

“The part that is impressive is the enthusiasm that his supporters have. He might not be growing his base, but they’re stuck with him — in the good way,” Selzer said. “It feels like they will not budge.”

Bridget Bennett/AFP via Getty Images

Supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rally at “First in the West” event in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 17, 2019.

Young told Vox a large part of this is due to the fact voters are very familiar with Sanders following his 2016 presidential run, and cautioned having such a well defined base of support can limit one’s ability to win over new supporters, particularly in a crowded field.

“He’s in some ways, tapped out in terms of his potential,” Young said. “Someone like Buttigieg or [Sen. Kamala] Harris … those are example of candidates that have much more potential, much more upside. Someone like Sanders, he can only lose ground — Biden as well.”

Young said there’s one clear way for Sanders (and Biden) to win new fans: “It’s going to be more through differentiation that they’re going to improve their lead or keep their position than name recognition.”

In recent weeks, Sanders has stood out for his winning of high-profile endorsements. Following a campaign break due to a heart attack, Sanders received the backing of the House of Representatives’ most visible progressives: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. He’s also won cosigns from a number of musicians, including TI and Jack White.

Having these powerful and notable surrogates has not seemed to affect Sanders’s polling. But he remains consistently competitive, and is a fundraising powerhouse, recently announcing his campaign has received 4 million individual donations. At the end of the third quarter, he had the largest fundraising haul — $25.3 million — and with the most cash on hand: $33.7 million. He has the money to stay in the race until the very end, and to pay for a lot more ads in the weeks ahead of the first contests.

With just months to go, few really know who they want to vote for

Despite the best efforts of the four frontrunners, it is not clear they have actually won voters over in any lasting way. Support for each is soft, particularly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

In Iowa, for instance, 62 percent of respondents told the Register they may change their minds before the caucuses. In New Hampshire, a state whose voters pride themselves on weighing options until Election Day, Quinnipiac found that number to be 61 percent, and perhaps worryingly for Warren and Buttigieg, the majority of their supporters responded they weren’t sure they’d end up voting for them — 70 and 73 percent, respectively.

All this suggests that who is on top now could be irrelevant. Looking at who is leading now only tells us who is leading now, not who will win the early states, and certainly not who will win the nomination. It could be Biden, it could be Warren, it could even be Julián Castro or Amy Klobuchar.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Democratic presidential candidate, former HUD Secretary Julián Castro marches with supporters at the Polk County Democrats’ Steak Fry, in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 21, 2019.

And perhaps this is why, despite voters on the state and national levels all telling pollsters they have plenty of choices and don’t want any more, Patrick announced recently he is entering the race and Bloomberg has hinted he might do the same.

The only thing voters have made clear beyond that they are largely satisfied with the number of current choices, is that what they want most in a nominee is someone who can defeat President Donald Trump.

A November Fox News poll of Nevada voters found 74 percent said beating Trump is the most important thing in a candidate; 63 percent of Iowans told the Register having a nominee capable of defeating Trump is more important than having one with policies they support. A national November Economist/YouGov poll found 65 percent of respondents saying it’s more important to have a nominee who can beat Trump than one who aligns with their personal policy positions.

Again, there is no consensus on who that person is, and each candidate has made the case for their own electability many times over. It won’t be clear who Democrats think stands the best chance until next year, and we’re still a year away from knowing whether those primary voters will be correct.

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